Friday, 15 July 2011

Is there really much else that can be said about M.D. Geist? It's an inglorious title of the direct-to-video animation market of 1980s Japan that has been regularly dug back up to play havoc on the anime community much like the titular character himself; he is less so on life support as he is a poltergeist, causing anime fans everywhere to groan with the racket he makes while a minority loyally support him. He's more than likely to keep coming back; in a way, if you love anime, you will hate M.D. Geist. If you hate anime, you may hate M.D. Geist, or you may love it! Though to be frank, generalisations are of poor taste. Japan's home video market for animation (Original Video Animation, OVAs) carries slightly more positive connotations than "direct-to-video" ever will in the west; the restrictions of TV serial anime were not to be found in the OVA market, which opened up far more doors for various creative forces, giving anyone the chance to do what they wanted without fear of censorship and with a strong target audience willing to buy, buy, buy. There was a bit less focus on the long-term money-making possibilties of a product and more of a focus on the overall creation process. OVAs allowed everyone on the production side to make a bit more money, even if the overall output in the long run was not entirely good. Regardless, pop stars and voice actors would keep themselves circulatory, while designers of any sort would give themselves more curriculum vitae ammunition.

M.D. Geist itself is a 40-minute outing by then-rookie Koichi Ohata, a mechanical designer first and a storyteller second, concerning the reawakening of a super-soldier on the war-torn planet Jerra. The proceeding events in Geist's misadventures on a planet much unlike the earth in Fist of the North Star feature commonplace mistreatings of the English language (frankly standard for anime) and acts of violence against the entire human form. The 'story' that was ultimately decided upon for the feature is really a springboard for Ohata to show off his drawings, animation is ropey throughout and fragmentary plot-expanding dialogue is ultimately bombastic and adds to the incoherence. Ohata, a man whose voice is unfortunately not often heard on the topic of his creations, said in the commentary of the thankfully fruitful US DVD that the original version of M.D. Geist is pretty damn poor, but hey, he was young and at the end of the day him and writer Riku Sanjo are still in the business, Hironobu Kageyama launched his singing career through appearing on the soundtrack to M.D. Geist and Norio Wakamoto walked away with a bit more money in his back pocket from voicing a character with not many lines. M.D. Geist's poor qualities stem from Ohata's youthful arrogance back then; his relatively low-budgeted animation team were often at odds with him over his mercilessly complex designs, which he refused to tone down because this project was his baby.

Geist is a product of a time long gone by in Japanese animation, and this is one reason why his popularity persists; if anything, Ohata created Geist to be antithetical, and antithetical he was. Appearing on a different end of the anime format spectrum for one, Geist was a protagonist designed to go against the grain of teenage heroes in shows coming out in the success of Mobile Suit Gundam, he was designed as being someone who took total glee in battle and the whole production has a somewhat nihilistic touch in that nothing nice EVER happens. However, we follow from Geist's side with his theme songs and background guitar solos highlighting his destruction. With this in mind, the overall unpolished quality of the production can be factored in as well. Being a representation of all of the above, the character and the title are now only more of an antithesis in today's anime industry, in which new fans have sprung up to defend Geist as someone and something fairly atypical of anime. Granted, there are still many naysayers, in which case, how has M.D. Geist's widely-known negative reception come to be? Aside from everything about it pissing off the highest elite of anime snobs from the 1990s, CPM's saturated promotion of the title is essentially what did people in. President John O'Donnell became infatuated with the title and it led to him licensing the character as his company's mascot for their U.S. Manga Corps division, meaning that every tape, Laserdisc and DVD under them greeted their viewers with a stiffly-animated CGI Geist The constant ballyhooing certainly garnered the title its interest as something new and exciting, but as time went on the propaganda became tedious, with great emphasis placed on how Geist was somehow a particularly artistic and deadly serious title, in reality it was a cartoon about a lot of people dying because the director thought his country had too many fictional lead heroes.

Without John O'Donnell though, the title would just be a relic dug up only by animation enthusiasts and regarded with a "hey, look at this" attitude. O'Donnell's love may have been for better or for worse, but through his actions he was able to publish a prequel comic to the original OVA and even gathered the money to fund a director's cut of the original and a sequel. The funds were raised from a customised Harley Davidson being bought off Marvel in their promotion of their Ghost Rider franchise and being used in motor shows to promote M.D. Geist and CPM; with "Geist" meaning 'ghost' in German, it was an amusing tactic. The director's cut touches up on several animation errors seen in the original (while rather frustratingly, inserting diabolical digital zooms that blur the image), adds several new short sequences and features an entirely new audio track. This cut doesn't so much add to the story (it slightly expands the opening sequence primarily, and in a flashback of stills draws a parallel to the prior prequel comic) as it does increase the gore quota. The sequel on the other hand, being made ten years after the original for one, is seemingly made with an entirely different mindset and focuses less on Geist, offering a fairly more serious and sombre story (that works to an extent), its biggest flaw however is that the animation in it is intensely limited. Regardless, despite what CPM had launched Geist into, their (or at least O'Donnell's) efforts have to be thanked for boosting the title's longevity.

Perhaps Geist is just unfortunate for being stuck in the harshly critical anime community, never entirely getting the dues he deserves. While the overall title is something very flawed it's not something I would regard with venom because of its bad qualities, nor would I really call it so "so bad it's good". However way you watch it though, all three animated incarnations of the character are entertaining, or at the very least feature some fantastic artwork and have incredibly good soundtracks, something which is oddly overlooked in many reviews of this anime. This writer would also like to stress that viewers perhaps try watching the director's cut and the sequel in the Japanese audio if possible; both of these audio tracks feature incredibly good VA work that has been sadly overlooked in favour of the 'entertaining' (to me, it's unbearably atrocious) English dub. Yeah, it makes it so bad it's good bla bla but the original production should be entertaining enough, so try enjoying it with the Japanese audio track. Ohata has been lucky getting the recognition he has gotten as a mechanical designer who began his career by working on some fairly unknown shows, and it's a damn shame he no longer seems to release things fully overseen by him. His fanbase is small, but dedicated; the fact that Ohata himself has seen a customised Revoltech figure of Geist is testament to this.

On that note, I have to come own the original title's soundtrack on vinyl, have framed the poster that came with it, I also own the OVA in book form, the Japanese complete works book, the UK and US DVDs, the sequel's soundtrack on CD, an autographed copy of the US graphic novel and the jewel in the obsessive crown would be two sketches of Geist himself signed by Ohata, with one of them sent to me by him. Writing my umpteenth take on the production is only further indication of my infatuation with this anomaly of an anime. If I had the option to fund Ohata for a full-fledged reboot of M.D. Geist though with the right money, you can beat your intestines I would.

Some trivia about M.D. Geist...Those guys have names!
Believe it or not, the bikers have names. Aside from Mash, there is Golem, who Geist promptly kills, Gista who promptly dies on his motorcycle, and Beast, who possibly dies after hurtling off his bike when Geist jumps aboard a mech (he returns momentarily in the Director's Cut). Their names are all in the credits, but only Golem is referred to by name in the US comic, the rest are only named in production materials.

She also has a name!
And it's not "Vaiya", it's "Paiya". It's seems that for all this time, CPM mistakenly used the name Vaiya without correcting it. To be fair though, it's an easy mistake to make; the katakana characters for ba (what can be interchanged as 'va') and pa look similar but are not identical. A simple oversight is all, it's just that it persisted for so long.

At the same time, she doesn't have a name...
Just like the bikers, Paiya is never actually referred to by name in the original Japanese audio. If you listen closely, she is referred to as "nesan", which means "big sister". CPM tried to do the good thing by helping create familiarity by inserting her name anyway, but the truth is the only way you would be able to tell she was called Paiya is through the credits! On a similar note...

All the names of the 'big players' are from the horror genre
Geist is from poltergeist, Paiya is from vampire, Golem is from (what else?) golem, Crutes is the Japanese pronunication of the Spanish word cruz, which means cross, as in holy cross. The associations are obvious, but only Geist and Crutes actually have meaning, Paiya and Golem are mostly named that way for aesthetic value.

That also has a name
The robot Geist fights at the end is called the Final Striker, and manages to be referenced that in the concept art book and in the sequel. Interestingly, the CPM comic calls it the "Final Terminator".

Confusing credits
Ohata was never initially billed as the director M.D. Geist in 1986, that billing went to Hayato Ikeda, someone who seemed to help out with some of the production. His name was used as it was feared a first-time director (who was really a mechanical designer) would look bad. Hayato Ikedia makes a cameo in M.D. Geist, he is the President Ryan character, who is dead.

Monday, 11 July 2011

With the vigilante film genre established, exploitation directors now had another genre to railroad with their celluloid mixtures of action movie set pieces and typical revenge subplots. Of course, they completely dodged whatever artistic merit the likes of Death Wish, Dirty Harry and possibly even Taxi Driver had, and simply showcased a lot of people dying, usually against the backdrop of the then-still-mentally-fresh Vietnam war. One such movie that is arguably a cut above the rest of exploitation titles is The Exterminator, which was about a Vietnam vet who took out bloody revenge against street punks and corrupt individuals alike after a race attack was committed on his best friend. The Exterminator received notoriety after it was lashed with a scathing review from Roger Ebert for its extreme violence and harsh scenarios, it was technically better made than most exploitation movies, but received a less-notable sequel that was ultimately something more exploitative.

With that in mind, this 1986 Indonesian flick is probably a closer sequel to the original Exterminator than its real sequel ever was, especially if you wanna go by the exploitation standard of branding a sequel; if a movie has come out and has more than a few themes similar to a previous low-budget movie (Mattei's Terminator 2 not being counted), then it can be considered a sequel. The plot to Final Score follows Richard Brown (Christopher Mitchum), a Vietnam war veteran (seeing the similarities already?) living peacefully in Indonesia with his family, having made his wealth from being involved in a computer business. On the day of his son's eighth birthday though, just as Richard goes out to buy him a toy gun of all things(!), his home is invaded, and his son and servants are murdered while his wife is gangraped and then added to the bodycount. Utterly distraught, Brown takes the law into his hands as he brings back his skills as a soldier to track down each of the men who ruined his life (taking out of all their gangs too). He learns that their leader is a corrupt business rival called Mr. Hawk (Mike Abbott with eyes that stare bullets into you), who has enough evil in his mustache and range of suits to make Mr. White, of similarly-excessive wacko Indonesian revenge adventure The Intruder, to quake in his shoes. With Hawk in his sights, Brown is joined by Julia, a woman also seeking revenge for what Hawk has done to her, as their fight becomes ever-more personal.

This is a cocktail of bad taste that just has to be enjoyed, Brown's assortment of different ways of killing people is just too fun. With a child death and gangrape no less than ten minutes into the movie, this is overkill from start to finish in such a classically shameless exploitative fashion. Granted, in terms of technical structure, it leaves the similar Intruder in the dust, but also similarly its wooden acting, silly dialogue and dub work are not going to make the rape of Brown's wife particularly horrifying, just slightly uncomfortable to watch. Mitchum blankly gets himself through some pretty insane situations while spouting monotone dialogue, while Abbott just gets to widen his eyes a lot. With Mitchum's slight resemblance to Exterminator star Robert Ginty, this very well could have been sequel in some part of the world, all it's missing is a lead character name change. Of course though, you're not watching something like Final Score for acting, you're watching this to see Mitchum build himself a body pile to heaven, with lots of black humour sprinkled in between. Oh, he does alright; there's plenty of stealth kills to go around, along with a baddie getting a piece of hot iron shoved up his ass, and some insane car chases with a passenger ultimately getting impaled on a branch! As always, explosions top off most of Brown's killing sprees, with the best bang being saved for last (you best believe rocket-firing motorbikes can fly). With everything else on explicit display, the only consensual sex scene is somewhat tastefully left private.

Dialogue is incredibly cheesy, with much of the nameless goon chatter really making you feel like this is some sort of head-shaking comedy. As for the music, it's all fairly unmemorable. Directed by the singularly-named Arizal, who quite impressively worked from the 70s right up until 2000; he competently gets the action filmed well. On the other hand, the script is by, shock of shocks (almost), Deddy Armand, the same writer behind The Intruder (final name drop)! This is super-violent, super-stupid and absolutely unabashed, Final Score is a blast. This really is one of the most brainless flicks ever, one that is simply overflowing with entertainment.

Monday, 4 July 2011

The lyrics to the end credits song from M.D. Geist have actually been scarcely reproduced in Japanese over the Internet, while the lyrics can be found in English if you look hard enough. To my knowledge a partial translation exists in the CPM release of the original OVA, as well as a non-professional translation seen in an AMV, and an entirely different translation in the official CPM releases of both soundtracks. I took the time today to write up the lyrics completely in Japanese using the original lyric sheet that came with the soundtrack as a guide, and my own translation to boot. My translation is slightly liberal, opting to try and sound close to the song without losing any meaning. Below are the lyrics, followed by them in English as translated by me, and finally in romaji...

Translated English:
This world we have always known, is an endless war
Never, never, never... Ceasing never
It's in all that pain and death, I listen to that melody...
"Come on! Come on! Come on!" No! We cannot flee

It's the only crazy game
It's the only foolish game

Just coming to, in a place where you cannot flee, you've got to be...!

DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
Raging fires of violence!
DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
These warriors have plummeted to hades

It was in the middle of all of that, that I chose to glance behind me
"Lover", "lover", "lover'... I heard it called
This frozen heart of mine, it is cracked and split
"Come on! Come on! Come on!" Now, return to life!

It's the only crazy dream
It's the only foolish dream
Affection cannot hold me back, my skills as a killer have got to be...!

DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
Raging fires of violence!
DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
These warriors have plummeted to hades

It's the only crazy game
It's the only foolish game
Everything you know, is going to completely die!

DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
Raging fires of violence!
DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
These warriors have plummeted to hades

DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
Raging fires of violence!
DANGEROUS! MOST DANGEROUS!
These warriors have plummeted to hades

For real this time, we're back

Forgotten Junk was last on a painstaking hiatus thanks to an overcharge of matters happening in life and one of the admins losing his computer. Additionally, Freewebs is complete shit, so Blogspot should now hopefully serve our mission to compile as much info as we can on strange and obscure animation and films as we can.

About Us

Collections of what the rest of the world deems crap, with some gems spread out in between. Forgotten Junk is penned by the separate entities of James and Oli, who met over YouTube thanks to a mutual love for M.D. Geist and from that, similar interests in film and other areas. Whenever they find time free, their writings on such eclectic moving images go here.